Writings on Writing (and Writers)

Over the past few years I’ve been contributing to Poets & Writers, which has graciously allowed me to explore some lingering questions I’ve had about non-fiction writing forms and writers’ sensibilities.

My first piece, On Essays, Literature’s Most Misunderstood Form, was meant to explore the definitional parameters of non-fiction writing’s most challenging (and to me, most rewarding) forms. In it, I discuss the form with such practitioners as Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Ford, Cynthia Ozick, Richard Rodriguez, Philip Lopate, Scott Russell Sanders and scholar Robert Atwan. The piece has since been adopted for classroom usage and it appears in The Practical Writer, a compendium on the craft and business of writing from the editors of Poets & Writers.

You can get information on republishing rights for On Essays here.

My next piece, And Also, I Write, was concerned with the sensibilities of writers who practice their craft as an avocation, and how their vocation impacted their writing. Included in the discussion are writers Ethan Canin, Frank McCourt, Anthony Bourdain, Thomas Lynch and Dean Paschal.

You can read And Also, I Write here.

My most recent piece, What Happened to the Revolution?: The Legacy of New Journalism, is rather self-explanatory. Having taught the subject for several years now at Tulane University, I couldn’t help what happened to all of the fervor and promise of the New Journalism movement after it hit its apex in the 1960s and early 70s. The piece aims to look at the factors that brought the movement originally to prominence, and to offer a prognosis for future generations of literary journalism. Among those who contributed to the discussion are writers Norman Mailer, Susan Orlean, Erik Larson, Sebastian Junger and Jennifer Egan and scholars Norman Sims, John J. Pauly and John Hartsock.

You can read What Happened to the Revolution? here.

Hank Stuever, a Pulitizer finalist and probably the most insightful (and funniest) essayist working in the U.S. newspaper business today, is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. You can read an interview I did with him for the "Direct Quotes" section of Poets & Writers online here.

In 2002, I had the great privilege of profiling one of my heroes, essayist Richard Rodriguez, for The Chronicle of Higher Education on the occasion of his most recent book, Brown: The Last Discovery of America (which, incidentally, I enthusiastically recommend as a masterful examination of race, identity and self-doubt).

You can read my Rodriguez profile here.